STORIES / Okara’shòn:’a
Being with your people
I told my wife, “We’re going to go home now. It’s time the girls got home and grew up knowing who they are.”
A child’s question
The thing is, all these children and young people asking these questions don’t speak the language. It’s not their fault. And if they go to ceremony, it’s all being done in the language that they don’t understand, so how do you expect them to know? It’s very stupid.
Puzzles at The Elders’ Lodge
Claire Diabo always did puzzles there, and I looked at the puzzles next to her. I saw a nice one and said, “Oh, I like that. I like that puzzle!”
What happens when we are boozing
They throw back one drink after another and you can see the body begin to sag and if they insist on more, their heads will bounce off the bar. That’s when the lower beings come in.
Shooting the flag
The older guys used to make a fire at the base of the tree, and they had some kind of ceremony. The men would shoot with shotguns until the tree broke because it was on a pole. It was maybe 10 or 12 feet in the air or a little bit higher.
Little Caughnawaga
There was a lot of ironwork in New York City. That’s why there were so many Mohawk families throughout Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.
How things change
Right here, on our community, our small, little reserve. Why couldn’t it have happened someplace else? Because the government thought they could do what they want with it. So, they put a seaway through, they put bridges through, they put highways through.
Taking work home
"Yes, you bring the people back home with you, the kids back home with you. It’s sometimes very difficult."
We are not alone
We weren’t allowed to watch TV, that was only for white kids. So we would climb the fence and we could see through their window and watch TV.
They all boxed
We had tournaments in our basement too; chess tournaments, dart tournaments, even wrestling. We had boxing down there!
Everyone remained quiet
It was June 1st, 1988 when we got raided by the RCMP. They came in with the buses and set themselves up on the mountains with their machine guns and snipers.
School committee
At the time, all the schools were federally run. About 400 of our students went to Billings high school in Chateauguay and they were treated badly. We tried to implement Mohawk language classes, which got started, but then Bill 101 was passed.
Taking back control
The people in town said that enough is enough. We are going to take over our education.
Prior to that, we had no one teaching us our culture, our language. It was all through Ottawa, they decided what we would learn. We used to have an Indian Agent in Kahnawà:ke who more or less ran the show.
American quarters
I learned the Indian songs from the other kids. I could only get so far, and the other kids would finish it off because they knew the whole song. We all sang together and then the tourists would throw their nickels and dimes.
Echoes of Hooks Point
As kids, we used to play from sunrise to sundown, and sometimes we camped in our own yards. We’d go to the river in the summer to go swimming and fishing, and during the winter, we used to skate on the pond and play hockey.
The wells
The council would come, from time to time, to do tests to see if there was bacteria. They said the well water itself was good, but that it wasn’t drinkable because of the mineral built up and rust inside the well. The pumps at the surface were eventually disconnected from the cylinders, but not all of them were.
Marathon Mom
She started going to Mohawk Miles, and she would help with fundraising. She would always go to the exercise classes at the Youth Center, and everyone was amazed saying “Oh man, she’s that old and here we are complaining.” She's an inspiration to many of our women in the fitness community.
Runway model
This was all free; all these people, these hairdressers, everything! We had all the clothing supplied for us, and we even got all of that for free. I had La Tisseur, a very exclusive store, they dressed all the men and women. I had Zellers, and I had Woolworths in Lachine at one time; so many came to help us.
Fire Brigade on parade
The day of the parade, we had all the kids get dressed in regalia to stand on the trailer with the heart. The moose heart is meant to take care of children who don’t have anybody, like orphaned children.
Catholic school
"You were forbidden to speak Mohawk in school. You want to get a good whack? Say something in Mohawk. The nuns and the priests were in on it. “Break them. If you break their language, you got them,” was the line that they told. "